The Mystery of Edwin Drood (57 page)

 

  “PRosa?” repeated Mr. Grewgious.

 

  “I was going to say Pussy, and changed
my mind;—did she tell you anything about the Landlesses?”

 

  “No,” said Mr. Grewgious. “What is the
Landlesses? An estate? A villa? A farm?”

 

  “A brother and sister. The sister is at
the Nuns' House, and has become a great friend of P—”

 

  “PRosa's,” Mr. Grewgious struck in, with
a fixed face.

 

  “She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir,
and I thought she might have been described to you, or presented to you
perhaps?”

 

  “Neither,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But here
is Bazzard.”

 

  Bazzard returned, accompanied by two
waiters—an immovable waiter, and a flying waiter; and the three brought in with
them as much fog as gave a new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had
brought everything on his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and
dexterity; while the immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault
with him. The flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had
brought, and the immovable waiter looked through them. The flying waiter then
flew across Holborn for the soup, and flew back again, and then took another
flight for the made-dish, and flew back again, and then took another flight for
the joint and poultry, and flew back again, and between whiles took supplementary
flights for a great variety of articles, as it was discovered from time to time
that the immovable waiter had forgotten them all. But let the flying waiter
cleave the air as he might, he was always reproached on his return by the
immovable waiter for bringing fog with him, and being out of breath. At the conclusion
of the repast, by which time the flying waiter was severely blown, the
immovable waiter gathered up the tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and
having sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter
while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr.
Grewgious, conveying: “Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward
is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,” and pushed the flying waiter
before him out of the room.

 

  It was like a highly-finished miniature
painting representing My Lords of the Circumlocution Department,
Commandership-in-Chief of any sort, Government. It was quite an edifying little
picture to be hung on the line in the National Gallery.

 

  As the fog had been the proximate cause
of this sumptuous repast, so the fog served for its general sauce. To hear the
out-door clerks sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel was a
zest far surpassing Doctor Kitchener's. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate
flying waiter shut the door before he had opened it, was a condiment of a
profounder flavour than Harvey. And here let it be noticed, parenthetically,
that the leg of this young man, in its application to the door, evinced the
finest sense of touch: always preceding himself and tray (with something of an
angling air about it), by some seconds: and always lingering after he and the
tray had disappeared, like Macbeth's leg when accompanying him off the stage
with reluctance to the assassination of Duncan.

 

  The host had gone below to the cellar,
and had brought up bottles of ruby, straw-coloured, and golden drinks, which
had ripened long ago in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering
in the shade. Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their
corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping rioters to force their
gates), and danced out gaily. If P. J. T. in seventeen-forty-seven, or in any
other year of his period, drank such wines—then, for a certainty, P. J. T. was
Pretty Jolly Too.

 

  Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no
signs of being mellowed by these glowing vintages. Instead of his drinking
them, they might have been poured over him in his high-dried snuff form, and
run to waste, for any lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face.
Neither was his manner influenced. But, in his wooden way, he had observant
eyes for Edwin; and when at the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his
own easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously into it after
very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grewgious, as he turned his seat round towards the
fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have been seen looking at his
visitor between his smoothing fingers.

 

  “Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly
turning to him.

 

  “I follow you, sir,” returned Bazzard;
who had done his work of consuming meat and drink in a workmanlike manner,
though mostly in speechlessness.

 

  “I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin,
success to Mr. Bazzard!”

 

  “Success to Mr. Bazzard!” echoed Edwin,
with a totally unfounded appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken
addition: “What in, I wonder!”

 

  “And May!” pursued Mr. Grewgious—“I am
not at liberty to be definite—May!—my conversational powers are so very limited
that I know I shall not come well out of this—May!—it ought to be put
imaginatively, but I have no imagination—May!—the thorn of anxiety is as nearly
the mark as I am likely to get—May it come out at last!”

 

  Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at
the fire, put a hand into his tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were
there; then into his waistcoat, as if it were there; then into his pockets, as
if it were there. In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of
Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action. It was
not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said: “I follow you, sir, and I
thank you.”

 

  “I am going,” said Mr. Grewgious,
jingling his glass on the table with one hand, and bending aside under cover of
the other, to whisper to Edwin, “to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first.
He mightn't like it else.”

 

  This was said with a mysterious wink; or
what would have been a wink, if, in Mr. Grewgious's hands, it could have been
quick enough. So Edwin winked responsively, without the least idea what he
meant by doing so.

 

  “And now,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I devote
a bumper to the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa. Bazzard, the fair and
fascinating Miss Rosa!”

 

  “I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and
I pledge you!”

 

  “And so do I!” said Edwin.

 

  “Lord bless me,” cried Mr. Grewgious,
breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses
SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly
inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? “I am a
particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a
morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover's state of mind,
to-night.”

 

  “Let us follow you, sir,” said Bazzard,
“and have the picture.”

 

  “Mr. Edwin will correct it where it's
wrong,” resumed Mr. Grewgious, “and will throw in a few touches from the life.
I dare say it is wrong in many particulars, and wants many touches from the
life, for I was born a Chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft
experiences. Well! I hazard the guess that the true lover's mind is completely
permeated by the beloved object of his affections. I hazard the guess that her
dear name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated without emotion, and
is preserved sacred. If he has any distinguishing appellation of fondness for
her, it is reserved for her, and is not for common ears. A name that it would
be a privilege to call her by, being alone with her own bright self, it would
be a liberty, a coldness, an insensibility, almost a breach of good faith, to
flaunt elsewhere.”

 

  It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious
sitting bolt upright, with his hands on his knees, continuously chopping this
discourse out of himself: much as a charity boy with a very good memory might
get his catechism said: and evincing no correspondent emotion whatever, unless
in a certain occasional little tingling perceptible at the end of his nose.

 

  “My picture,” Mr. Grewgious proceeded,
“goes on to represent (under correction from you, Mr. Edwin), the true lover as
ever impatient to be in the presence or vicinity of the beloved object of his
affections; as caring very little for his case in any other society; and as
constantly seeking that. If I was to say seeking that, as a bird seeks its
nest, I should make an ass of myself, because that would trench upon what I
understand to be poetry; and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at any
time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within ten thousand miles of it. And I
am besides totally unacquainted with the habits of birds, except the birds of
Staple Inn, who seek their nests on ledges, and in gutterpipes and chimneypots,
not constructed for them by the beneficent hand of Nature. I beg, therefore, to
be understood as foregoing the bird's-nest. But my picture does represent the
true lover as having no existence separable from that of the beloved object of
his affections, and as living at once a doubled life and a halved life. And if
I do not clearly express what I mean by that, it is either for the reason that
having no conversational powers, I cannot express what I mean, or that having
no meaning, I do not mean what I fail to express. Which, to the best of my
belief, is not the case.”

 

  Edwin had turned red and turned white,
as certain points of this picture came into the light. He now sat looking at
the fire, and bit his lip.

 

  “The speculations of an Angular man,”
resumed Mr. Grewgious, still sitting and speaking exactly as before, “are
probably erroneous on so globular a topic. But I figure to myself (subject, as
before, to Mr. Edwin's correction), that there can be no coolness, no lassitude,
no doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke state of mind, in a real
lover. Pray am I at all near the mark in my picture?”

 

  As abrupt in his conclusion as in his
commencement and progress, he jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when
one might have supposed him in the middle of his oration.

 

  “I should say, sir,” stammered Edwin,
“as you refer the question to me—”

 

  “Yes,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I refer it
to you, as an authority.”

 

  “I should say, then, sir,” Edwin went
on, embarrassed, “that the picture you have drawn is generally correct; but I
submit that perhaps you may be rather hard upon the unlucky lover.”

 

  “Likely so,” assented Mr. Grewgious,
“likely so. I am a hard man in the grain.”

 

  “He may not show,” said Edwin, “all he
feels; or he may not—”

 

  There he stopped so long, to find the
rest of his sentence, that Mr. Grewgious rendered his difficulty a thousand
times the greater by unexpectedly striking in with:

 

  “No to be sure; he MAY not!”

 

  After that, they all sat silent; the
silence of Mr. Bazzard being occasioned by slumber.

 

  “His responsibility is very great,
though,” said Mr. Grewgious at length, with his eyes on the fire.

 

  Edwin nodded assent, with HIS eyes on
the fire.

 

  “And let him be sure that he trifles
with no one,” said Mr. Grewgious; “neither with himself, nor with any other.”

 

  Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat
looking at the fire.

 

  “He must not make a plaything of a
treasure. Woe betide him if he does! Let him take that well to heart,” said Mr.
Grewgious.

 

  Though he said these things in short
sentences, much as the supposititious charity boy just now referred to might
have repeated a verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something
dreamy (for so literal a man) in the way in which he now shook his right
forefinger at the live coals in the grate, and again fell silent.

 

  But not for long. As he sat upright and
stiff in his chair, he suddenly rapped his knees, like the carved image of some
queer Joss or other coming out of its reverie, and said: “We must finish this
bottle, Mr. Edwin. Let me help you. I'll help Bazzard too, though he IS asleep.
He mightn't like it else.”

 

  He helped them both, and helped himself,
and drained his glass, and stood it bottom upward on the table, as though he
had just caught a bluebottle in it.

 

  “And now, Mr. Edwin,” he proceeded,
wiping his mouth and hands upon his handkerchief: “to a little piece of
business. You received from me, the other day, a certified copy of Miss Rosa's
father's will. You knew its contents before, but you received it from me as a
matter of business. I should have sent it to Mr. Jasper, but for Miss Rosa's
wishing it to come straight to you, in preference. You received it?”

 

  “Quite safely, sir.”

 

  “You should have acknowledged its
receipt,” said Mr. Grewgious; “business being business all the world over.
However, you did not.”

 

  “I meant to have acknowledged it when I
first came in this evening, sir.”

 

  “Not a business-like acknowledgment,”
returned Mr. Grewgious; “however, let that pass. Now, in that document you have
observed a few words of kindly allusion to its being left to me to discharge a
little trust, confided to me in conversation, at such time as I in my
discretion may think best.”

 

  “Yes, sir.”

 

  “Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just
now, when I was looking at the fire, that I could, in my discretion, acquit
myself of that trust at no better time than the present. Favour me with your
attention, half a minute.”

 

  He took a bunch of keys from his pocket,
singled out by the candlelight the key he wanted, and then, with a candle in
his hand, went to a bureau or escritoire, unlocked it, touched the spring of a
little secret drawer, and took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a single
ring. With this in his hand, he returned to his chair. As he held it up for the
young man to see, his hand trembled.